Drug and Alcohol Detox Programs and Centers

When looking for drug and alcohol detox programs and centers for oneself or a loved one, it is easy to feel overwhelmed at all the different words and phrases that are used, and how they apply to individual facilities. For instance, one website or information source may just talk about drug treatment centers while another just talks about alcohol treatment centers. Still another may provide information on drug rehab as well as alcohol rehab.

Further, such words or phrases as in-patient, out-patient, in-patient/out-patient, residential living, aftercare, and support programs may also appear. These can also be confusing as some drug treatment centers may offer all of them, while some alcohol treatment centers do not.

At times like these, it helps to have a "glossary" of sorts that will help explain some of the words and phrases that are often used when talking about both drug rehab and alcohol rehab. This article has been written for just that purpose.
To begin with, the difference between in-patient and out-patient facilities will be explained. Simply put, an in-patient facility is where one goes for either drug rehab or alcohol rehab and remains at the facility twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for a specified length of time. Even if facilities are classified as strictly drug treatment centers or strictly alcohol treatment centers (as some are) if they say that in-patient facilities are available, then the definition is the same. Residential living is simply another way of describing an in-patient facility.

Out-patient facilities are designed for patients to come and go. In other words, a patient does not stay at out-patient drug treatment centers or alcohol treatment centers; rather, they report to the facility at scheduled times to continue the type of rehab that had begun at an in-patient facility. Again, the centers may be substance-specific (just for drug rehab or just for alcohol rehab), but the definition for out-patient will be the same.

Aftercare means just what it says. When drug treatment centers or alcohol treatment centers offer aftercare, this means that patients can continue follow-up programs, such as relapse prevention therapy or even vocational and job training at these facilities.

Support programs are those things such as AA, NA, or other groups which offer support and help both during and after treatment. These may be affiliated with specific drug treatment centers or alcohol treatment centers, or they may be separate from them.

Now that a better understanding of some of the words and phrases has been effected, the next step is providing help in locating drug treatment centers or alcohol treatment centers in specific areas. The Internet has many website locaters, which usually provide information on the different programs available in each state. Some sites let users point at a particular state and click on it, while others list each state, with links to each one of them. They are very simple to use, and are very helpful in assisting one with finding alcohol rehab or drug rehab facilities in one's home state or adjoining ones, if they prefer to utilize facilities in one of them.